One Beautiful Mistake

January 8, 2015January 8, 2015 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 1 Comment

One Beautiful Mistake

Perhaps redemption looks a lot like this. Or a little like this. Or something like this. I’d like to hope that there is a splash of brilliant transformation on the mistakes that we have made. Brushstroke by brushstroke. Wet with the tears of remorse and cries for forgiveness and new starts.

Forgiveness and new mercies sent to Earth on the wings of His amazing grace. And I whisper the prayer, give me the eyes to see Your loving arms around each one of my own, Beautiful Mistakes. Made beautiful by Your grace. Washed clean. Changed into holy beauty, by Your unfathomable, unbelievable, unending, and unmerited grace.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

One Beautiful Mistake

Red bleeds pink from the sky
one night
Writing cryptic messages

Heaven’s hieroglyphics
I run to it
I run away

Catch what is lost
My breath

I see the beauty
In one beautiful mistake

Redemption
Written by The
Sky-writer
Lover of my soul

I nod a billion times
Each a nod of gratitude
They number,
Mirror every unseen star

Feel
You dry my leaking eyes
And hear
You whisper
At the start of night

There was a fire in the sky last night
Before the earth
Was wrapped
In skies of frigid cold
Remember long, the beautiful
Remember long, the warmth
Hold loosely to each gift
And wait for the Beautiful’s return

Red bleeds pink from the sky
One night
Writing holy messages

Just One More

January 7, 2015January 7, 2015 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

Just One More

Is there room for one more

In a world of crowded words and broken hearts

Why tell another story of the fiery nighttime light

Am I right

Or am I wrong to write another

Poem about the moon
Many will not remain to hear

Captivated
by his winsome wooing,
he carried me from the warmth that was my night

In the quiet of our home
in the quiet of my heart, I heard him speak in muted tones

Many married, many longer, many sit
hip to hip
shouldered
by the night

And we
belie our age with our posture
Heads of every shade of grey
more akin to two
retiring into

Their final moonlit night

Of life

Seek nothing loftier
Than the
Fullness of our moon

++++

And so if I fail
To write this poem, to which the world may not respond

One more word gift, packaged by a poet’s bow
that the world
may not want, nor read nor need

About the moon and me

And you

Then it is I who die a little as I live

Let fizzle out
the gift

That was your whispered words

Let them fall into a world, cold and dark

Burn out like every other love that lost its fire

Flame extinguished by
cruel ignorance
of the simple needs of love

++++++

Just one more
maybe just for me

A poem about the moon and you

And how you spoke
gently

Into our love
on one bliss-filled winter’s night

The poets cannot stay away

From subjects on the moon and love

But neither can the moon

Good company, I am in

When I am held so sweetly
by both the moon

and you

+++++

I may never know

If I was right or I was wrong

But I will know
that I was

Simply, loved by you
In the winter
Of our love

Once more

The Concrete Bench (Unseen, Behind The Lens)

November 22, 2014November 22, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ Leave a comment

The Concrete Bench

You would have no way to know

For I am showing you only beauty

It is what I frame, in the imaginary crosshairs

Of my lens

Cropping out ugly, should it

Creep into my viewfinder

As I sit alone, in grateful solitude

On a bench I call my own

Made in my imagination

Just for me, grey, stone-cold, sturdy

Reflect

And be reflected

Dream and watch the dreams float by

Held

And undergirded, by the sea

The seen and unseen

Pass me by

While I count the joy and toss the pain

Into the sea, a salty grave

For tears

No More Happily Ever After’s

October 9, 2014October 9, 2014 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 2 Comments

Welcome to Day Nine.

No More Happily Ever After’s

And they lived happily ever after
Wait, what?

All those precious years spent
The clock tick tock
Tick, ticking
Wishing and waiting for
The grand grande finale
Life put on hold while things become bigger,
And better and bester and bestest
All those fair tale endings
Their endings so perfect
The slippers and princesses and knight’s
In their bright shiny armour
I sort of like things just the way
That they are

Even if sometimes
They seem dull, dim and plain

Maybe it all was a crock of baloney
Maybe Hans Christian Anderson or ole Walt
Yeah, Disney
Or dear Mother Goose
Or whoever dared write it
Should have sat up and noticed
All the wild and the wooley, the winsome
The wonderful spilling out on the now
Like paint from a bucket tipped from the sky
Because I spy
With my little pair of hazel green eyes
The craziest most wonderful things in
A day
There are white standard poodles
Seated in cars
Blazing
Through busy intersections
Sitting up straight as a board in the passenger seats
In open convertible cars
It struck mommy as silly
And tickled her funny bone
As we drove all the way home

You can’t make this stuff up
Dear for Pete and
For heaven’s sake
A capuchin monkey’s having lunch
Out on the Parkway
With his owner
Seated out on the deck

The scandalous, humorous right here right now
Stop and wake up
In the middle of this one crazy life
The what’s happening this minute
While we’re off in a fog
Dreaming of perfect
And all the incredulous make-believe
After’s are not after
No, they are what’s just right here

In the mannered South where I was raised
To be oh so polite
Never abrupt, rude or
God-forbid loud
Or question my elders
I would just let it lie or lay or
Whatever

But the theology of the whole notion
Is just a little too off
And the cost well the cost
Is much too high to pay
You pay with your life
If you don’t enjoy this one glorious day

I’ll take my happily’s
Now, at lunch
By the deafening train track
With red bugs and yellow jackets
And Dementia, seated to my right
And all the uncertain rest
Of it
All

I’ll take my happily’s
In the comings and goings
And the dull inbetweens
The murky uncertainties and the worry and pain
The cancer, the divorce, the loss and the rest

I’ll look for the happily ever’s
All over the place

For me the ending of today’s well-lived story
Comes in the miraculous the beautiful
Found in
One very flamboyant
Fall tree

That caused me to slam on the brakes of the car
And stop at the urging of mother
Stop
On the side of a steep mountain hill
Stop in the middle of one thin hilly road
Stop dead in our tracks

And capture this moment
With one very long stare

The epitome of Joy
On a plain old Thursday
We sat and we drooled and we sighed
Just look at this

Our happily’s some days
Come in the form
Of tree’s whose leaves
Look like candied corn
Covered in
Technicolored leaves
Displayed against a canvas,
An
Azure blue sky
Sacred
Majestic
Pointing us heavenward
And reminding us

Look to the trees with their magnificent Glory
And leave the happily ever after’s
To those old
Children’s stories